According to the Lebanese Daily Star Newspaper web site [1], the Islamist Osbat al-Ansar group based in the southern Palestinian refugee camp of Ein al-Hilweh issued a Fatwa forbidding its members against fighting the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF). "It is against our religion to fight the Lebanese Army ... The daily details of life in the camp should not distract us from the events in the Gaza Strip” [2] declared the group's spokesman, Abu Sharif Akel, said during a rally at the camp on Friday, 5 December 2008.According to the report, the Islamist Hamas movement in solidarity with Gaza organized the rally.

Osbat al-Ansar is a Sunni Muslim extremist group, largely based in the Ein al-Hilwah Palestinian refugee camp near Sidon in southern Lebanon. The group has a smaller presence in the Nahr al-Bared camp outside Tripoli in northern Lebanon, and is also active in Sidon, Beirut and the Dinniyeh plateau in northern Lebanon.

Osbat al-Ansar is listed in the United Nation’s 1267 Committee’s consolidated list and as a proscribed terrorist organization by the governments of Canada, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States.Osbat al-Ansar leadership continues to make statements supporting attacks conducted by other groups and advocating Jihad against the West. These include the April 2004 announcement urging Iraqi insurgents to kill Western hostages to avenge the death of Hamas leaders Abdul Aziz Rantisi and Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, and the February 2006 statement praising attacks by angry mobs against the Danish consulates in Beirut and Damascus in response to the Danish cartoons controversy. Osbat al-Ansar objectives are to establish a Sunni Islamic state in Lebanon by overthrowing the Lebanese government, eliminating Israel and thwarting anti-Islamic and pro-Western influences in Lebanon.Osbat al-Ansar as a radical Islamic Sunni organization is sympathetic with Hamas objectives cooperating with its leadership in Lebanon to enable Hamas's propaganda, rallies and solidarity activities within the Ein al-Hilwah Palestinian refugee camp near Sidon in southern Lebanon and in the Nahr al-Bared camp outside Tripoli in northern Lebanon.

Osbat al-Ansar maintains links to a number of terrorist organizations, including Al-Qa’ida, Tanzim Qa’idat al-Jihad fi Bilad al Rafidayn (Iraq) and Hamas. As a local Lebanese Sunni terror group, it maintains global Jihad orientation and ideology, which subscribes to Osama bin Laden’s ideal of global jihad and is planning to extend its operations into Syria, Israel and the fully controlled Hamas' Gaza strip. Following Hamas’s takeover of the Gaza strip in mid June 2007,a radical Islamic political entity was created, with the markings of a sovereign country. This entity controlled by Hamas, a movement with a radical Islamic ideology, aspires to apply it on the general Palestinian population beyond the enforcement of the Islamic social codes in daily life.

Under Hamas’s rule in Gaza, organizations characterized as global Jihad began appearing and started carrying out attacks against western entities present and operating in the Gaza strip. Under the auspices of Hamas rule, since 2005 a new radical Islamic stream was established mainly composed by Hamas and Islamic Jihad operatives, disillusioned from the “pragmatic” conduct of Hamas, its deviation and betray from the path of Jihad. This radical entity bearing the Arabic Islamic name “Jaljalat”is an umbrella conceptual radical Islamic "brand name" of consolidated entities operating in the Gaza strip.

Radical Islamic organizations, which are identified with the “Jaljalat” bear Islamic names taken out from the Islamic narratives and myths repository which leaves no doubt of their global Jihad nature: “The Army of the believers-Al Qaeda in Palestine”,” The Army of Islam”,” The Mujahideen battalions”,” The Army of the Ummah-Jerusalem” “Fatah al-Islam in the Land of Ribat”, “Abu Rish Brigades - Sword of Islam”, “The Jerusalem Jihad Warriors movement” and others less known.